When Jew Murders Jew

Excerpts from a lecture given by Rabbi Mendel Weinbach, shlita, at Ohr Somayach Institutions, Jerusalem (Monday, November 6, 1995) before the funeral of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin

In another couple of hours the eyes and ears of the entire world
will be turned towards the funeral of the late Prime Minister
of Israel. Together with all rational Jews in Israel and throughout
the world, we express profound shock and unequivocally condemn
this assassination which is a tragedy for the entire nation.

But it is a twofold tragedy. A Jew was murdered and he was murdered
by another Jew. When our Sages discuss the historic background
of the Fast of Gedalya, they ask, "Who murdered Gedalya?"
The question is a strange one for the murderer of this saintly
leader of the Jewish people following the destruction of the Beis
Hamikdash is clearly identified in Tanach. And yet, our Sages
ask in rhetorical fashion, "Who murdered Gedalya?" so
that they can supply the obvious answer: "Yishmoel ben Netanya
murdered him!" Our Sages wished to thus communicate the
twofold dimension of that tragedy. A Jew was murdered - and -
he was murdered by another Jew.

Let it be clearly understood by all that we do not suggest by
any stretch of the imagination a comparison between the assassinated
prime minister and Gedalya ben Achikom, that great tzaddik
whose death is compared by our Sages to the tragedy of the destruction
of the Beis Hamikdash itself. Nor do we feel that this
is the time or place to offer any evaluation of what the late
prime minister accomplished in his lifetime as a military and
political leader. We leave those evaluations and those eulogies
to those who knew him better and who worked together with him.
In another few hours, the world will hear their statements.

Our responsibility at this moment is to focus on the second half
of this tragedy - the fact that a Jew was capable of shedding
the blood of another Jew. How did we reach this point?

As Torah Jews we are aware that everything of this nature which
happens is intended as a lesson from Heaven for us to learn so
that we can improve ourselves in our relations with Hashem and
with our fellow man. But let us not be guilty of the short-sighted
small-minded and politically motivated reactions which fill the
media today - with the Left blaming the Right and the Right blaming
the Left for splitting the nation into two hostile camps. With
the same passion for logic and truth which we bring to the study
of gemora and its commentaries, let us try to analyze where
all of us have made the mistakes, large and small, which produce
an atmosphere in which Jew is capable of murdering Jew. Let us
here and now offer a cheshbon hanefesh, a searching of
the soul for our entire nation.

First and foremost, let us ask ourselves if we are not guilty
of a desire to be like all other nations - to imitate their music,
their dress, their society and their political values. Have our
government leaders not inscribed on their banners the slogan:
Kechol Hagoyim Beis Yisroel - that Israel must be a nation
like all other nations? Did not one of the early prime ministers
say that Israel will not have achieved complete statehood until
- like all other nations - it has a Jewish thief sitting in a
Jewish prison? And when complaints were made to another prime
minister that Jewish police brutally beat up a Jew, did he not
answer that in a modern state we must become accustomed to the
idea that a Jew can hit another Jew? So in order to be like all
the other nations, we have paid the price of having prisons filled
with Jewish criminals, of seeing Jews regularly beating one another
with words and with clubs. And now, must we also become accustomed
to political assassination as the crowning glory of our national
assimilation?

But, perhaps, the most important lesson for us as bnei Torah
is the danger which lies in a Jew deciding on his own what he
may or may not do on behalf of the cause he believes in. The
Torah Jew knows that there is a Shulchan Aruch, a code
of Jewish Law which guides every aspect of his life and that there
are Torah leaders who apply that Shulchan Aruch to every
situation which faces our people.

When Jews are guided neither by the Shulchan Aruch nor
their Torah leaders, but by their own idea of what is best for
the Jews, then they degenerate into all sorts of violence, whether
it was the extreme leftists in their time calling Begin and Sharon
"murderers" because of the Lebanon war or the extreme
rightists using the same term in regard to Rabin because of the
peace process. And such violence of words inevitably leads to
what happened in the Malchei Yisrael Square in Tel Aviv two days
ago.

How many of us remember when the Rosh Hayeshiva of Ponevizh,
Rabbi Eliezer Shach, shlita, issued a letter a few months
ago urging yeshiva students to avoid participation in any anti-government
demonstrations? At the time, we understood that Rabbi Shach,
with all of his reservations about an anti-religious leftist government,
was urging us to remain in the beis midrash because the
merit of Torah study was a much more effective way of achieving
security for our people than futile demonstrations. But the words
of a gadol hador, a leader of our generation, must be understood
on a number of levels.

Perhaps Rabbi Shach was also warning us that political demonstrations
were dangerous because they gave legitimization to verbal violence
which, in turn, might become physical violence and even lead to
political assassination.

And here we must do some soul searching in our own community.
Where in Shulchan Aruch is it written that it is permissible
to throw stones at passing cars and at police on Shabbos? Which
Torah leader gave permission to call a Jewish policeman a Nazi
and to burn garbage containers as a form of protest? Have we
ever stopped to think that if Torah observant Jews indulge in
such minor forms of violence, they send a dangerous signal to
others that violence is the proper way to get things done?

But let us return to the soul searching we offer on behalf of
the entire nation. Only a few months ago the prime minister's
deputy defense minister put a bullet into his head because he
could no longer bear the illness he suffered. Government leaders
and the media hailed him as a hero for having had the courage
to commit suicide in order to avoid becoming dependent on others.

This attitude was totally contrary to Jewish Law and to the traditional
Jewish opposition to suicide and mercy killing. We believe that
a man is not the master of his own life, that the life given by
the Creator can only be taken by Him or through His directive.
What was the message communicated by all the fanfare surrounding
that suicide? That a man can decide when it is worth living.
How much of a leap does it take for someone to start making value
judgments about somebody else's life? When Jews no longer respect
the inviolable sanctity of human life, they become reckless drivers
setting new records every year for traffic deaths - and they may
even decide that a political enemy's life can also be taken.

Political assassination, it should be noted for the record, is
nothing new in the history of Zionism. A Jew, Dr. Yaakov DeHaan,
was assassinated by agents of the pre-state establishment for
the "great crime" of negotiating with Arabs for the
sake of national security. Accusations of murder were hurled
by Left against Right and Right against Left in such incidents
as the murder of Arlozoroff and the firing on the Irgun ship Altalena.
But all that was before statehood. No one believed that once
Jews had a democratic state of their own that the political assassination
so familiar to less civilized countries would rear its ugly head
in Israel - and certainly not against a prime minister.

This myth of "It can't happen here" is just one of the
myths that have been exploded with the assassination of the prime
minister. Gone, too, is the myth of Israel's genius in guarding
its leaders. Investigations are still in process but it is obvious
that somebody erred - and in a very serious way. Perhaps this
shattering of myths will cure us of one of the most dangerous
illusions which has plagued Israeli society from the beginning
of statehood.

Our successful wars against the Arabs led to the emergence of
the idea of "Super-Jew". Little David suddenly
became mighty Goliath. I still remember the national mood following
the Six Day War when we achieved a miraculous victory. The feeling
in the country was that the IDF was invincible and we could even
take on the Russians and Americans, if necessary. This was a
modern version of the old danger which the Torah warned us that
a Jew may be misled by a G-d given victory into believing kochi
ve'otzem yodi. Such confidence in his own power removes a
Jew from his dependence on Heaven and his faith in Hashem. It
is also this false faith in the power of arms which leads to political
violence and even assassination.

The traditional Jew always realized that he could rely only on
Hashem and he always bowed his head in submission to the government
of his country, praying to Hashem to inspire a nation's leader
to act favorably towards us. The sword and gun were always the
weapons of Esav and Yishmael. But when the children
of Yaakov begin to pride themselves more on military prowess than
on obedience to Hashem, then, even a Jew is capable of shedding
the blood of another Jew.

Articles may be distributed to another person intact without prior permission. We also encourage you to include this material in other publications, such as synagogue or school newsletters. Hardcopy or electronic. However, we ask that you contact us beforehand for permission in advance at ohr@ohr.edu and credit for the source as Ohr Somayach Institutions www.ohr.edu